{"id":7856,"date":"2013-12-20T22:29:39","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T11:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2013-12-21T09:38:37","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T22:38:37","slug":"first-footprints-farsd-fatbrontz-verst-pitprands-spelling-as-if-the-language-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2013\/12\/first-footprints-farsd-fatbrontz-verst-pitprands-spelling-as-if-the-language-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"First Footprints, Farsd Fatbrontz, Verst Pitprands: Spelling as if the language matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have watched the excellent series\u00a0First Footprints\u00a0<\/a>a couple of times. It is a great overview of the origins of human occupation of Australia, with fantastic visual effects and photography. It starts with the declaration that \u201cFirst Footprints seeks to treat Indigenous cultures and beliefs with respect\u201d. Respecting Indigenous Australian languages should involve at least treating them the way you would any other language and checking that words in Australian Indigenous languages were written accurately. Think of the times you have watched a film that had misspelled English subtitles in it and what it makes you think of the care the subtitler took. It only took me a little effort to check on the following mistakes by web-browsing and by talking to people with experience in the particular languages.
\n<\/p>\n

I was puzzled at the mismatch between what I heard Aboriginal people saying in the program and what was given in the program’s subtitles. My experience with Martu Wangka speakers allowed me to identify that what was given as <\/span>Marngunyi <\/i>(in \u2018Marngunyi the Dreaming Serpent created this spring\u2019)<\/span> <\/i>should have been \u00a0<\/span>Manguny(-ju)<\/i>, and to know that the translation is \u2018Dreaming\u2019 rather than \u2018Rainbow serpent\u2019 as it was given (<\/span>jila<\/i> in the video is the \u2018snake\u2019 part of the Rainbow Serpent).
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The bush known as jinyjiwirrily<\/i> (Solanum centrale<\/a>,<\/i> referenced for example in Fiona Walsh\u2019s work<\/a> ) was subtitled as jinjiuwirryi<\/i>.<\/p>\n

These words are also readily findable in Jim Marsh\u2019s dictionary of Martu Wangka<\/a>.\u00a0Ballala<\/i>\u00a0was given for ‘bush turkey’ but there is no need for double \u2018l\u2019 and the Martu spelling system uses voiceless symbols so it should have been written as\u00a0palala.<\/i>\u00a0I can\u2019t find any reference to palala<\/em>\u00a0for ‘bush turkey’ in dictionaries of Martu or close varieties.<\/p>\n

The placename given as Karjara<\/i> was unusual as \u2018r\u2019 before \u2018j\u2019 is uncommon (and I didn\u2019t hear it there) and the last \u2018r\u2019 sound was a trilled \u2018r\u2019 and so should have been \u2018rr\u2019. In fact a quick web search<\/a> shows the placename recorded as Kajarra<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Bininj (Gunwok)\u00a0I heard ka[\u2018t]bi<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0and read Gutby\u00a0<\/i>(I wasn’t sure what the consonant was before the \u2018b\u2019, but Murray Garde tells me the word is\u00a0kakbi<\/i>\u00a0\u2018north\u2019). I heard Yingarna<\/i> and read Yingana<\/i> (‘mother who came from the north’).<\/p>\n

In a Cape York Wik language I heard Yu\u2019ungka<\/i> and read Young<\/i>.\u00a0I heard mamanji<\/i> and read mamaji<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Browsing the web to see if others had similar quibbles and I found the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cNawarritj has his name spelt in two different ways. The initial spelling is correct (caption on footage of him explaining the Earth Mother rock art image). The later version (Narrawitj) in the final credits is incorrect.\u201d (http:\/\/www2b.abc.net.au\/tmb\/Client\/Message.aspx<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A series like this clearly had years of planning and lots of expert input, but it\u2019s a shame that linguists were not included in the effort.\u00a0Would these mistakes have been made if the language was French, German or Italian? Hardly. There is still a long way to go in recognising that Aboriginal languages are languages deserving the same respect as any others.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thanks to Peter Sutton for information about the Wik example and Murray Garde for confirming the reference in Bininj Gunwok.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have watched the excellent series\u00a0First Footprints\u00a0a couple of times. It is a great overview of the origins of human occupation of Australia, with fantastic visual effects and photography. It starts with the declaration that \u201cFirst Footprints seeks to treat Indigenous cultures and beliefs with respect\u201d. Respecting Indigenous Australian languages should involve at least treating … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7891,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions\/7891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}